Solid Concepts and Equus Bring the Automotive Muscle

I’m not much of a car guy. As long as my vehicle can handle adverse weather conditions and isn’t pink or bright yellow, I’ll drive pretty much anything. My general indifference doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a well-designed car, however. Even I feel faint stirrings of automotive infatuation when I see a classic muscle car tooling down the road.

Equus Automotive’s BASS770 is just the kind of car to catch my eye. Its lines recall the classic muscle cars I find so appealing, but is brand new and built with an eye toward luxury that wasn’t really part of the original design of muscle cars. The BASS770 is also the product of additive manufacturing (AM) expertise, directed by Solid Concepts.

Equus' BASS770 took advantage of the possibilities offered by leveraging AM for the design and production processes. Courtesy of Equus.

From the press release:

Instead of an assembly line mass produced version of those [muscle] cars, we are offering a hand crafted automobile with the finest carbon fiber and aluminum frame, a unique V8 engine engineered for maximum power and efficiency, a hand-tooled leather interior, personalized attention and service, that provides a world class luxury sports car.

The design and production processes for the BASS770 revolved around AM. Parts were prototyped, fitted, altered and re-designed all based on input from Solid Concepts. A number of the parts were created using cast urethanes built around 3D printed cores. These components include the instrument panel, headlight and taillight bezels, HVAC ducting, glass trim panel fender, console covers, seat belt covers, and a few under-the-hood parts.

Not every 3D printed part ended up as a core or a prototype. Some parts created using selective laser sintering were chromed and used for production, including components for seat adjustment. A number of the AM-built components were wrapped in leather and used in the interior of the pre-production model. The versatility of AM allowed the technology to be used in nearly every stage of the design and production of the vehicle.

The BASS770 runs on a LS9 supercharged 6.2L (8 x 770 cm3 ) engine, with a 90 degree V8, aluminum block and heads, titanium valves, hydraulic lifter with dry-sump oil system. All of that translates into 640 HP at 6500 RPM, with a top speed of 200 mph (320 km/h), and it can go from 0 to 60 in 3.4 seconds.